I hope you’re well. I’ve been so damned busy recently! Since
the start of 2014 the amazing ‘Reframe’ project, (I’ve previously mentioned
here and here), has taken me to Algiers, Istanbul and Brussells with my good
friends Ilya and Hannah Berry. In those places we meet and made new friends with
many great artists and movers and shakers. I feel incredibly lucky to have been
involved. In the next couple of week’s I’ll post some photos and sketchbook
pages from those trips.

In January I was contacted by Laura Malacart, a
cross-disciplinary visual artist,
who had developed a multi-media project built around the portrait of a
27-year-old 'non-verbal' autistic man. In spite of his lack of language, Kyle
had found a ‘voice’ through music: Laura Malacart’s work was focussed on the
political identity of his ‘non-verbal voice' as well as exploring the
complexity of his physical voice in his multifaceted expressions.

Laura commissioned me to make the drawings for a 6-chapter
graphic story to be experienced alongside a non-narrative video work called
Onomatopoeia. I have drawn the story ‘YES!’ on the basis of her documentary
video and photographic material, while and her script reports verbatim
conversations collected during months of filming her subjects. For the launch of the event we have
published a limited edition of the story on tabloid format, since she first
learned about Kyle from a tabloid clipping.

She conducting the first two symposia at the Dana Centre and
King’s College to launch our project and instigate a cross-disciplinary debate
around the project’s core themes. Laura is a seriously talented individual who
is committed to using her artistic practice to intervene on social issues. I
highly recommend you seek her work out and follow her practice and how it
develops.

Page 1, Chapter 6, YES

Here are the links to the event’s she’s staging, and the
blog I produced to host the comic I drew.